The National Film Center
in Tokyo has been closed for renovations but will be reopening in May.As part of their celebrations of thecentenary of Japanese animation the museum will feature an exhibition
celebrating the career of legendary puppet animation pioneer Tadahito Mochinaga.The exhibition will start with his
contributions to early pre-war anime in Japan, such as assisting Mitsuyo Seo in
the production of Ari-chan (1941).Among his many innovations
during the production of this film, he constructed the first multiplane
animation table in Japan.

In 1945,
Mochinaga moved to China where he set up an animation studio and mentored young
artists who would go on to become the top animators in the country.Upon his return to Japan in 1953, he began
producing educational puppet animation shorts.One of these films, Little
Black Sambo (1956) came to the attention of the American film producers Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Saul Bass and led to Mochinaga’s company doing the stop motion for
some of America’s best loved television
holiday classics such as Rudolph
The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and The
Little Drummer Boy (1968).

Mochinaga
was a mentor to Japan’s
puppet animation masters Kihachirō Kawamoto and Tadanari
Okamoto, who in turn would inspire a future generations of stop motion
animation in Japan.

The
exhibition will feature original puppets, drawings, and notes.There are also film screenings to be held
July 22-23, 2017.More information TBA at
a later date.

1917 marks the centenary of the advent of commercially
produced anime in Japan, but unfortunately it is impossible for us to get a
clear picture of what those early years were like. In the decades following the Second World
War it was believed that all of the animation created in the 1910s was lost
either in the Great Kantō earthquake
of 1923, the firebombing of Tokyo, or due to just plain neglect.

From what little information survives of this earliest
period of animation production, we know that at least 17 short films were made
in 1917 by Shimokawa Ōten, Seitarō Kitayama and Jun’ichi Kōuchi. According to the reckoning
of Katsunori Yamaguchi and Yasushi Watanabe (日本アニメーション映画史, 1977), at least 12 short films
are known two have been released in 1918, followed by one in 1921, 5 in 1922, 3
in 1923 and 6 in 1924. This may not
sound like a lot but considering that the techniques they were using were still
experimental in nature and they had only a few assistants to help them, it is
actually an impressive number of films for such a short period. To put it in context, the American animation
pioneer Winsor McCay was only making
a film every couple of years while in France Émile Cohl directed or co-directed 20 shorts in 2016 (only one of
which is extant).

From what little is known about this period, most
of the animation was done using simple line drawings or cutouts or a
combination of the two techniques. Because
of the expense of celluloid and the time consuming nature of animation, many of
the films that appear to be line drawings only actually used cutouts in order
to save money, resources, and time.

1924 is a significant year because it marks the
beginning of the directorial careers of two more early animation pioneers: Hakusan Kimura and NoburōŌfuji.
Very little is known about the life and career of Kimura other than the
fact that he was mentored by Kitayama at Kitayama’s own studios (which were
destroyed in the 1923 earthquake) and went on to make educational films at
Asahi Kinema Gomei-sha. He also
collaborated with Kenzō Masaoka in the
development of the first Japanese animation talkie Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka (力と女の世の中, 1933, considered lost). It
is interesting to note that one of Kimura’s the co-directors on The Tale of Crab Temple wasTomu
Uchida, who was working at Asahi Kinema Gomei-sha during this early phase
of his career. By 1927 he would move to
Nikkatsu where he develop into one of Japan’s top feature film directors.

Ōfuji was mentored by Kōuchi and was influenced by the silhouette animation films of German
pioneer Lotte Reiniger. He completed his first two films in 1924 and
went on to become the first Japanese animator to establish a name for himself
internationally at festivals such as Cannes and the Venice Biennale.An Old Fool was rediscovered in 2013 by
a film collector and was restored by IMAGICA. The NFC animation archive currently lists The Story of Tobacco as being released
in 1926, but its official filmography of Ōfuji gives 1924 as the date of completion of the first version of
the film, which is why I include it here. It is a fascinating early attempt at mixing live action and animation.
This list of extant films is based on evidence I have of film screenings at the NFC and elsewhere. I will update this list when I discover
evidence of other extant films.